CHINESE TECH GIANT HUAWEI ANNOUNCES SAFE-CITY SOLUTIONS FOR AFRICA

Chinese Information Communication Technology (ICT) solutions provider Huawei has announced plans to expand its safe-city solutions in Africa by providing ICT-based security systems to help in incident prevention, emergency response and evidence collection.

Eman Liu, the President of Huawei Enterprise Business for Eastern and Southern Africa Region, announced this here Thursday on the sidelines of the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa meeting in Kigali.

According to Liu, safe city solutions are a feature of a smart city, a combination of different ICT solutions like wireless networks (broadband), smart phones and cloud computing. Huawei, he says, wants to partner with African governments to introduce the safe-city solutions on the continent.

Huawei is already providing safe city solutions in the Kenyan cities of Nairobi and Mombasa since last year. The Rwandan capital, Kigali, has also adopted the "Smart Kigali" initiative, supported by Huawei, which aims at modernizing the lifestyle of Kigali city dwellers and visitors through use of ICT.

Huawei, which entered Africa in 1998, is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue, while for the smartphone business along, it ranks No. 3 in terms of global market share, behind only Samsung and Apple.